I'm a little nervous about starting a discussion about mythology because there are always spammers lurking around, but while researching etymologies of Greek mythology, I found some sources that suggest that Athena is not of Indo-European origin, or at least her name is not. It's possible that the name Athena comes from a Lydian or Hurrian deity (or Pelasgians, whoever they were). "Ati" means "mother" and is the name of a Hurrian goddess.
Supposedly, Athena was associated with the snake goddess in Classical times as it was in the Bronze age
It seems that there was a significant influence of Anatolian deities on the Hellenistic pantheons.
As far as I can understand, the non-Indo-European words, especially place names like Athena, Corinth, Parnassus and Olympus, are all pre-Indo-European. Even the words Nike and Thalassa are not IE

Can someone knowledgeable in etymology and mythology comment on this? And please, if anyone knows that there are spammers here, would you respect the discussion? I don't want it to be polluted with irrelevant content.

>>17824406 (OP)
OP again
by the way, this source is not very good because it was written by a woman and according to the author the premise is "matriarchal cult in Crete", so maybe we have some confirmation bias here. but here is another source, in case this one is very biased

>>17824411
Other one

>>17824414
One more thing
Marija seems to have a similar view, although I don't consider her bibliography to be serious because she is a feminist idiot and the basis for her entire pre-IE matriarchy hypothesis is basically the representation of fertility idols in significant quantities. But she basically supports the theory that Athena is in fact from a Neolithic snake cult, and she claims that it is Neolithic symbolism and cites other sites in Neolithic Europe with similar representations.

Another interesting thing I found, besides the sources saying basically the same thing, with an impressive consensus, is that this author argued something interesting, where Minoan Crete was probably originally a serpent goddess, being Obviously important to the pre-Indo-European people of Greece, (since they named a city after her) but then it says that Pallas was an IE deity, and basically there was a kind of syncretism between both deities to form "Pallas Athena", that is, with this EEF/IE syncretism Athena underwent an Indo-Europeanization.
Other authors talk about Athena being Mesopotamian, I don't see how that could be the case... and if it is legitimate, this could perhaps be linked to how the Athenians were described in Greek sources, basically as being indigenous to the land, and linked to the Pelasgians.

>>17824406 (OP)
If Athena, as a war goddess, is influenced by anyone, it is probably the Sumerian-Babylonian goddess Ishtar. A goddess associated with love, war, birth, etc.
This isn't a strange claim because we can actually track something similar with the goddess Aphrodite.
Aphrodite can most likely be traced through a series of steps back to Ishtar and a good hint of this is the cult of Aphrodite Areia, AKA, Aphrodite the Warlike. Who was worshipped throughout Southern Greece and the isles and was a goddess that handled both erotic love and hateful war. In this case the farther north and west you go, the less she has to do with war and the more she's focused around just love.
It is possible that Athena experienced something similar where a goddess associated with wisdom and planning had war grafted onto her by influence from the East and boosted by how important Ishtar was at this time. Gaining associations with the intellectual side of conflict.

>>17824442
Mesopotamian influence makes no sense

>>17824456
Why?
The Greeks had a long connection with the region.

>>17824468
the connections were not so restricted, what the OP said makes more sense, since the Minoans were the ones who influenced them, not "Mesopotamia". there is more Egyptian influence than Mesopotamian

unfortunately, the Greeks are much less IE than we like to imagine
Athena and the Titans are probably of non-IE origin

how/why did Athena go from being a snake to being an owl?

>>17824588
Same question here

>>17824406 (OP)
Athena's origin myth (Zeus turns his first wife, Metis, that was pregnant, into a fly, devours her, Athena grows inside Zeus' body, who gets a headache and calls Hephaestus to open his head, with Athena emerging fully armed by Metis) is taken from the Hurrian Succession Myth as well as the Titanomarchy, who unlike their Hittite successors, did not speak an IE language. I find it curious how it is Hephaestus who takes Athena from Zeus's head because he was the only god who had a sexual relationship (rape) with her and fulfills the role of Aya (Enki) in Hurrian Mythology. Enki was the god of water and Hephaestus was raised by water goddesses/nymphs and his only children, the Cabeiri, are aquatic metallurgical beings associated with various similar daemons such as Korubantes, Kouretes, Telkhines, Cyclops, Giants, etc... The Irish called them Fomorians.

And athena has many IE attributes

>>17824588
>>17824630
Owls, and birds in general, lay eggs like reptiles (which made the ancients associate the both, see Winged Serpents and Cosmic Eggs in Mythology), and are their natural predators, just like the eagle, the animal symbol of Dyeus Phter, is.

>>17824655
>le eggs
extremely forced correlation, to say the least.

>>17824702
So you believe in this?:

>A feathered dinosaur is any species of dinosaur possessing feathers. That includes all species of birds, and in recent decades evidence has accumulated that many non-avian dinosaur species also possessed feathers in some shape or form. The extent to which feathers or feather-like structures were present in dinosaurs as a whole is a subject of ongoing debate and research

>The anthropologist Lynne Isbell has argued that, as primates, the serpent as a symbol of death is built into our unconscious minds because of our evolutionary history. Isbell argues that for millions of years snakes were the only significant predators of primates, and that this explains why fear of snakes is one of the most common phobias worldwide and why the symbol of the serpent is so prevalent in world mythology; the serpent is an innate image of danger and death

>Furthermore, the psychoanalyst Joseph Lewis Henderson and the ethnologist Maude Oakes have argued that the serpent is a symbol of initiation and rebirth precisely because it is a symbol of death

>Using phylogenetical and statistical methods on related motifs from folklore and myth, French comparativist Julien d'Huy managed to reconstruct a possible archaic narrative about the serpent. In this Paleolithic "ophidian" myth, snakes are connected to rains and storms, and even to water sources. In regards to the latter, it blocks rivers and other water sources in exchange for human sacrifices and/or material good offerings

>>17824406 (OP)
>I found some sources that suggest that Athena is not of Indo-European origin
That a lot of the greek gods are Near Eastern isn't exactly controversial. That's where all the action happened, that's the reference point for everybody in the region.

>>17824480
The Titans and the Norse Jotun are quite similar.
It makes most sense to assume that both are PIE, at least the part that went West.